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"Before, a government would block CNN, for instance. But now it is targeting blogs in Farsi or Chinese or Arabic while the Western media is relatively open. It's the topics that hit close to home that they want to control; locals aren't likely to read CNN's Web site," said Ronald J. Deibert, director of the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab -- which is a partner in the OpenNet Initiative.
A few weeks ago, Wikipedia inadvertently blocked users in Qatar from amending posts to the collaborative Web site as it hurried to respond to a spike in spam.
The mistake is easy to understand -- the spam was originating from an IP address belonging to Qtel, the only telecom provider in the country. Qatarians, however, could be forgiven for assuming their access to the site was cut off for more sinister reasons because in much of the Middle East, media is controlled in some form by the government -- although how much, where, how and in which countries is difficult to say.
Story
A few weeks ago, Wikipedia inadvertently blocked users in Qatar from amending posts to the collaborative Web site as it hurried to respond to a spike in spam.
The mistake is easy to understand -- the spam was originating from an IP address belonging to Qtel, the only telecom provider in the country. Qatarians, however, could be forgiven for assuming their access to the site was cut off for more sinister reasons because in much of the Middle East, media is controlled in some form by the government -- although how much, where, how and in which countries is difficult to say.
Story
